Patrick
B. O’Sullivan, Ph. DDirector
posull@ilstu.edu
438-5110
Functions at CTLT
Patrick oversees all CTLT programs, services, operations and employees. He is the primary contact for the Summer Institute, Grants, Teaching Awards as well as policy issues, faculty development research inquiries, and general programming questions. Patrick assumed the directorship in summer 2005, coming from the School of Communication where he remains a tenured associate professor.
University Committee Memberships
Professional Association Memberships
Teaching
Patrick has more than 20 years experience teaching in higher education. His teaching specialty is coursework on communication via technologies. He developed or re-developed five courses for the School of Communication, including an undergraduate survey course on technology and society (Comm 218) and an advanced course on diffusion of innovations (Comm 318) as well as an advanced course in new communication law and policy (Comm 363). He created a graduate course Foundations of Mediated Communication (Comm 418) and an experimental course New Communication Technologies at the Intersection of Mass and Interpersonal Communication (Comm 492). A former journalist, he has also taught reporting and editing courses before entering graduate school. In addition he has taught courses in interpersonal communication, health communication, and communication theory.
Scholarship
Patrick’s scholarly work includes topics such as strategic uses of communication technologies in relationships, “masspersonal” communication, “flaming” and other problematic online communication, strategic social use of channel selection (i.e., “channelesics”), and mediated immediacy. His research has been published in some of the elite journals in the communication discipline. He has presented more than two dozen papers at national and international research conferences, including five “top paper“ awards.
Personal
Patrick and Ana (an associate professor at IWU) have three young children (Tomas, 10; Clare 7; and Samuel, 5), who make them feel young and make them feel old at the same time. The entire family loves to camp and hike, especially in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming during summers. Everyone also loves to visit family in Southern California spending time at the beach near where Patrick was raised. Patrick is also a board member of the Old House Society and has been learning handyman skills working on his 1917 Craftsman-style home on Bloomington’s historic east side.
More information about Patrick
